Something To Remember Me By
by Todd's Pet
Summary: A little story about someone Spike Vegas wraith met before he managed to get home. Unashamely romantic, but it's the least Spike deserves. Bitter-sweet ending.


Something To Remember Me By

She's been watching him for some time, the strange looking guy at the Black Jack table. He has that tired, pale-skinned look of someone who only goes outdoors at night. His clothes aren't hugely unusual - black jeans, stripy tee-shirt and goth-style jewelry under a black duster coat - but the way he wears them makes him look different. That, and his hair - hanging just past his shoulders in bedraggled strands of almost-white with black streaks in the front and little braids scattered through it - his hair fascinates her and makes him stand out from the crowd.

She suspects, however, that that is the last thing he wants. He's quiet, never speaks, just comes here every night to play cards and leaves when he's won a moderate sum of money.

Tonight she decides she's had enough of just looking; tonight she's going to speak to him.

She orchestrates bumping into him as he leaves, knocking his shades to the ground. She picks them up and holds them out, making him reach for them.

"I'm so sorry," she says coquettishly. "I hope they're not broken. I can give you my number - call me if they are and I'll be happy to pay for them."

He merely takes his glasses from her hand and walks on.

Undeterred, she turns and follows him out of the casino. "Em... you come here often?" She makes a face. "I can't believe I said that, especially since I see you here every night."

He carries on walking but makes a short grunt, giving an indication of a deep, gravelly voice. She pursues him out to the car park, wishing she could make him speak just to hear it.

A old, black sedan car flashes its lights as he presses the button on the key in his hand. Wordlessly, he opens the door, gets in and starts the engine.

She stands in front on his car, hands on her hips and shouts, "Hey!"

He winds down his window and just sits there.

"I'm coming on strong to you and you just drive off without saying a word? Do you know what that does to a girl's ego?"

Still he just sits and looks at her. She scoots around the car and dives into the passenger seat. "Okay?" she asks.

"You know nothing about me," he speaks at last. His deep voice has a strange, almost multi-layered quality to it that makes her skin tingle, like vibrations.

"I'm supposed to believe you're some kind of psycho?"

"You would be wise to stay away from me."

"I have inbuilt radar," she says. She smiles at him and he turns to look at her. "I'll grant that here's something weird about you - especially your eyes; you're hiding something - but you're not a psycho."

"You have a death wish."

"Well, if I do it's my problem,"

He shrugs, puts the car into gear and drives off with her beside him.

oOo

He drives for two hours without saying a word while she studies his profile, his hair, his slender torso, narrow hips and the slim thighs of long, long legs that seem to go on forever.

He pulls up outside a solitary metal trailer sitting in the middle of nowhere in the desert. He gets out and starts to walk toward the trailer, leaving her sitting in the car.

She gets out of his car and, standing by the door, shouts, "Hey!"

He turns and looks at her, the moon behind him making his hair look like strands of silver. "I am damaging your ego again?"

"Kind of," she laughs and skips across the sand to stand beside him. She looks around at the empty desert. "Hmm... isolated... should I be worried?"

"Too late now," he says and heads into the trailer.

She shrugs and follows him inside. "Nothing ventured..."

oOo

"This is certainly different," she observes, looking around the inside of his trailer. "You live here?" He doesn't answer. She starts to walk around, poking and prodding tentatively here and there. "What's all this stuff for?"

"Call it a science project."

"You're a scientist?" she asks, her interest piqued.

"Kind of," he replies, mimicking her speech patterns.

She starts to understand that this one is the strong, silent type and gives up on trying getting him to talk. She wanders around the weird equipment, messy but yet clearly organised. Some of it looks decidedly alien, almost organic. She reaches out to a screen that looks as if it would feel like skin...

"Don't touch!"

Startled, she jumps back and bumps into him, cramped in the small trailer. She's intensely aware of his body against her back and flusters a little. "Em... aren't you going to offer me a drink...?"

"I don't have any."

"Oh, juice or water will do fine," she says, misunderstanding.

"I do not eat or drink."

"Hmm, I noticed no kitchen...You don't live here? So why bring me...?"

He smiles at her in an almost predatory manner. "Now you are afraid," he says, rolling his eyes and sighing.

"I'm not scared of you!" she says, jutting out her chin. "You're no psycho. I watch all those TV shows, you know - and movies, sci-fi movies." She nods her head as if she'd said something profound. "All this stuff," she waves her hand around the trailer's contents. "I bet you're an alien, trying to get home."

Instantly he spins round to glare at her. She folds her arms across her chest and grins triumphantly. "Uh-huh, I knew it," she says.

But he doesn't laugh and he doesn't deny it. He just stands there, watching the expression of sheer disbelief slowly spread across her face as the light dawns as to what is actually happening here.

oOo

Suddenly she's alert and excited. "Oh, my God, it's real! You're a wraith!" she exclaims. She grabs his hand and turns it palm-upward. "There, see? I knew it! Oh, my God! You're Spike!"

Suddenly realising what she's done she backs off. For the first time tonight, the reality of what he is and where she is hits her and she's afraid. She starts to back off across the trailer. "Are you going to feed on me?"

"Would you let me?"

"Would I hell! Well, I probably couldn't stop you but I'm warning you I won't go down without a fight."

"That's a pity; I was kind of hoping you would." He grins mischievously and adds, "Don't worry, I'm not hungry - at least, not that kind of hungry…"

"You're kidding me!" she says, not really knowing why she's so shocked. After all, why else did she come all the way out into the middle of the desert with him? "You mean you actually do want to... do wraith... with humans... can they?"

"Physiologically we are built pretty much the same," he tells her, moving slowly but purposefully toward her.

"Pretty much?"

"There are one or two... variations..."

In spite of her heart beating fit to burst, she figures that if he'd wanted to feed on her he would have done it by now. Besides she always longed for a bit of excitement in her life and here it is, standing right in front of her. She decides to grab it with both hands.

"If I'm going to do something as insane as this, then I want to see you, the real you," she tells him. "Take the make up off."

Without any preamble he tears at his own face, peeling off the insipid flesh-coloured layer to reveal the translucent green of his own skin. He leans forward and brings his hands to his face, removing teeth and contact lenses and tossing them onto the dresser to his right.

When he stands upright again, she's gazing straight into deep golden eyes with slitted black pupils that seem to see into her very soul.

"Perhaps you've changed your mind now and wish to leave?" he says.

"Why would I want to leave?" she sighs, looking at him as if he were a work of art. "You're beautiful."

oOo

One month later and she's thinking she's just lived the best four weeks of her entire life. But she's nothing if not realistic and she knows all good things must come to an end.

She knows full well what Spike does when he leaves in a cranky mood and comes back acting almost amenable. She also knows from his increasing excitement - or at least, what she interprets as excitement, for even now he rarely speaks or shows much emotion - that he has almost finished his "science project". She knows that means he's almost ready to go home, but she doesn't know why that makes her feel so sad.

This morning, as she snuggles into his warm and slender green body, not even minding the hard ridges down his spine digging into the soft flesh of her stomach, the reason is just starting to tug at the corners of her mind.

He stirs and wakes and, turning around to face her, pulls her into his arms. Then it hits her and the words burst from her like a small explosion. "Take me with you!"

He pulls his forehead into a puzzled frown.

"I know you're almost ready to go home," she explains. "I have no right to ask you to stay, but you can take me with you... can't you...?" He says nothing. "You told me about the human worshippers - I could be one of them," she pleads. Still he says nothing and a hard knot starts to form in her stomach. "I'm not good enough to be your worshipper, is that it?"

"You would be considered a worshipper of the highest calibre – I would be the envy of my hive," he tells her softly. He kisses the end of her nose and adds, "But I cannot take you with me."

"Why not?" she pouts.

"To get back to my hive I must create a temporal rift, a kind of portal." He pauses and looks at her sadly. "There is only power enough for one person to pass through."

"I'll sneak though at the same time - the portal will never notice me!" She tries to cover her sadness with humour.

"The calculations are very precise."

"When do you leave?" She sighs as she gives in, knowing he's right.

"Tonight." He sees her gasp and try to hide her tears. For the first time in many centuries, he feels a deep, strong tide of emotion and wishes he could take her with him. "We have time to say goodbye," he tells her gently.

oOo

"I'll never forget you, Spike."

"Yes you will, in time. Humans always do." He shrugs himself into his coat, his human disguise complete again.

She watched him get ready to leave her apartment to go back out to the desert for the last time. How ironic, she thinks, that this look was what first attracted her to him and yet now it seems so dull, so banal, in comparison to his heart-wrenching natural beauty.

"Humans have such short life spans and yet forget so much," he tells her.

"Not me," she says, determined. "I'll remember you until the day I die."

He takes her face between his hands and looks deeply into her eyes. "I will carry your memory with me to another galaxy, where you will live in my heart for thousands of years."

Struggling not to cry, she tries to memorise every inch of his face, determined that, in decades to come, she will still be able to conjure the image of him in her mind. As she watches him, she sees something flit across his features, an idea.

"Do you trust me?" he asks her. "Do you really trust me?"

"Of course."

Gently, he lays his feeding hand against her chest.

She thought it would be painful, but it's not, although she suspects that later, when he's gone, the scar it leaves will hurt for a while... a scar... she finds it perversely comforting to know that she'll carry a permanent reminder of him; a part of him she can hold close for the rest of her days.

These mundane thoughts swirl around in her head as her body revels in the sweet rush of him; the essence of him pouring into every cell in her body. She feels a connection with him that even two galaxies cannot diminish.

When he stops she could cry for the loss of it and has to take several deep breaths to stop the room spinning.

"What did you just do?"

"I healed you," he answers.

"But I'm not ill."

"From the day they're born humans are slowly dying," he tells her. "You're healthy but all the tiny little things that weren't working quite the way they should are healed now. You will live about thirty years longer than you would have done naturally."

He turns to walk out the door and out of her life. She calls to him, "Why?"

He looks over his shoulder and smiles at her. "Call it a gift… a little something to remember me by."


End file.
